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The Full Package

November 27, 2023 0 Comments

“Marguerite and Armand”/“The Dream”
The Australian Ballet
Sydney Opera House/Joan Sutherland Theatre
Sydney, Australia
November 21, 2023 (livestream)

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2023 by Ilona Landgraf

The last new program of the Australian Ballet’s 60^th anniversary season was an all-in-one package. Its two Ashton ballets – “Marguerite and Armand” (1963) and “The Dream” (1964) – showcased the dancers’ prowess and satisfied the audience’s appetite for both the tragic and the comic while at the same time celebrating the company’s historic connection to the Royal Ballet. This connection has been of the most pleasant nature as became evident in the interview that the livestream’s presenter, Catherine Murphy, and the artistic director, David Hallberg, conducted with Berry Wordsworth. Wordsworth, the Royal Ballet’s former music director, joined the Opera Australia Orchestra to conduct the Ashton program. As he recalled Ashton’s creative passion and the friendship between Peggy van Praagh, the Australian Ballet’s founder, and her London counterpart, the Royal Ballet’s Dame Ninette de Valois, one could sense that the buoyant spirit of the good old days is still vibrant. Furthermore, warmth and good humor dominated the add-on program and included additional backstage interviews and videos. (more…)

The Messenger

November 22, 2023 0 Comments

“Nicholas Roerich”
New Tretyakov Gallery
Moscow, Russia
November 2023

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2023 by Ilona Landgraf

“Have you ever crossed a rapidly flowing river in a boat? It is always necessary to steer higher than the spot towards which you are headed, otherwise you will be taken downstream. So, too, in the sphere of moral demands it is always necessary to steer higher – life takes everything downstream. Let your messenger hold the helm high, then he’ll reach his destination.”

Such was Tolstoy’s comment regarding the painting The Messenger: Tribe Has Risen Against Tribe (1897), a graduation work at St. Petersburg’s Imperial Academy of Arts submitted by twenty-three-year-old Nicholas Roerich (1874 – 1947). It depicts an old messenger sitting in a wooden boat next to an oarsman. The messenger’s stooped shoulders and downcast gaze suggest that he’s delivering bad news. In the distance, a Slavic settlement is outlined against the night sky. Sergei Diaghilev, in his review of the graduation works for the newspaper Novosti, called The Messenger one of the most interesting works in the exhibition, and it was one of three in total the collector Pavel Tretyakov chose for his Moscow gallery. The Messenger is one of the highlights of the Tretyakov Gallery’s current “Nicholas Roerich” exhibition, which celebrates the artist’s 150^th anniversary. (more…)

Style Over Substance

November 10, 2023

“Modanse”
Svetlana Zakharova Evening
Bolshoi Theatre (Historic Stage)
Moscow, Russia
October 31, 2023

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2023 by Ilona Landgraf

The title “Modanse” sounds like an à la mode ballet – classy, extravagant, and fashionable. It belongs to a double bill featuring the Bolshoi Ballet’s prima ballerina Svetlana Zakharova. The external production includes dancers of the Bolshoi Ballet’s roster, and since 2019 has guested regularly on the Bolshoi Theatre’s stage and abroad.

As a seasoned artist, Zakharova must have an instinct about what suits her on stage. Hence I’m flabbergasted that she has kept Mauro Bigonzetti’s “Come un respiro” (“Like a Breath”) in the program. The 2009 creation, of which Zakharova acquired a reworked version, is ill-suited to make her and her co-dancers (among them Anastasia Stashkevich, Ana Turazashvili, Mikhail Lobukhin, Vyacheslav Lopatin, and Denis Savin) look good. Moreover, its succession of bland solos, pas de deux, and group dances fails to excite. (more…)

Trickling

November 7, 2023

“Through the Looking-Glass”
Ballet of the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Music Theatre
Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Music Theatre
Moscow, Russia
October 29, 2023

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2023 by Ilona Landgraf

This April, the Stanislavsky Ballet premiered a new piece by one of Russia’s up-and-coming choreographers – Konstantin Semenov, who happens to be a dancer from within their own ranks. Semenov, winner of the 2015 competition for young choreographers of the festival for contemporary dance Context. Diana Vishneva, so far mainly created dance miniatures. His recent work “Through the Looking-Glass” is his first full-fledged, seventy-minute one-acter. Still a small-scale production, it was shown on the theater’s small stage, where the audience sits in intimate proximity to the dancers.
“Through the Looking-Glass” is based on Lewis Carroll’s 1871 eponymous novel, the sequel of his “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” (1865). Again, young Alice enters a rhyme-ridden fantasy world, but this time through a mirror rather than a rabbit hole. Everything in this world is reversed, including written text, the meaning of words, and time (which runs counter-clockwise). (more…)

Fiendishly Fine

November 4, 2023 0 Comments

“Master and Margarita”
Bolshoi Ballet
Bolshoi Theatre (New Stage)
Moscow, Russia
October 29, 2023 (matinee)

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2023 by Ilona Landgraf

I was skeptical whether Edward Clug was the right choice to tackle Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita”. A Russian choreographer seemed better equipped to adapt this landmark of Soviet literature for the ballet stage than a Romanian-born working in Maribor, Slovenia. Two years after its premiere at the Bolshoi Theatre, I was able to watch Clug’s “Master and Margarita” – and my reservations were proven thoroughly wrong. It’s a fabulous blend of entertainment and food for thought, brimful of metaphors and allusions. Yuri Possokhov, Clug’s Russian colleague, currently preparing a new piece for the Bolshoi, is full of appreciation for “Master and Margarita” as well. I met him at another performance where he told me that Clug understands the Russian soul perfectly well.

Interestingly, Clug, together with Christian Spuck (then artistic director of Zurich Ballet) intended to stage “Master and Margarita” in Zurich in 2015, but their plan was thwarted when the theater’s research revealed that ticket sales would be uncertain because the Zurich audience wasn’t familiar with Bulgakov’s novel. Destiny brought the Bolshoi Ballet’s artistic director Makhar Vaziev to the scene who decided to stage the piece in Moscow.

A lifetime could be spent exploring Bulgakov’s political and social satire and the biblical questions raised by the novel. In short “The Master and Margarita” (published only after Bulgakov’s death in 1940, first in an edited serial form in 1966/67 and uncensored in 1973) intertwines two plots: (1) the mayhem caused by the Satan (alias Professor Woland) and his entourage when visiting Moscow in the 1930s, and (2) the trial of Jesus of Nazareth in Jerusalem during Pontius Pilate’s governance. The connecting link is the Master, a Muscovite author (and Bulgakov’s alter ego) whose latest manuscript tells the Jerusalem plot. Margarita is the woman who loves him and – unlike Moscow’s critics – his work. (more…)

An Own Goal

October 20, 2023 0 Comments

Wiebke Hüster / Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ)

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2023 by Ilona Landgraf

Some days ago, an article by Wiebke Hüster, leading dance critic of Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, caught my attention (FAZ, October 07, 2023). Hüster wrote on the upcoming premiere of “Last Work” at the Hessian State Ballet. “Last Work” is by the Israeli Ohad Naharin – and he was the one Hüster objected. (more…)

Sorting Out

October 13, 2023 0 Comments

“Catharsis Dante”
Ballet of the Krasnoyarsk State Opera and Ballet Theatre
Hvorostovsky Krasnoyarsk State Opera and Ballet Theatre
Krasnoyarsk, Russia
June 30, 2023 (video)

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2023 by Ilona Landgraf

This April, the Krasnoyarsk Opera and Ballet Theatre scored a double victory at Russia’s Golden Mask Awards. Their reconstruction of “Catherine ou la fille du bandit” won the prize for the best ballet production and the best female part. I was curious about the company’s repertoire, but failed because of the distance. Krasnoyarsk is in Siberia, around 2400 miles east of Moscow. Luckily, Nikita Dmitrievsky helped me out. His ballet “Catharsis Dante” received its world premiere at the Krasnoyarsk Ballet this June and Dmitrievsky sent me a recording without much ado.

His name is well-known in Russia, where he realizes the majority of his dance projects, but he also worked in the Netherlands, UK, Israel, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Finland. An allrounder, Dmitrievsky is choreographer, artistic director, producer, filmmaker, lighting designer, and teacher in one. Costume design doesn’t seem to be on his spectrum and in the case of “Catharsis Dante” is by Inna Zaitseva. (more…)

Refurbished

October 5, 2023 0 Comments

“Swan Lake”
The Australian Ballet
Arts Centre Melbourne / State Theatre
Melbourne, Australia
September 29, 2023 (livestream)

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2023 by Ilona Landgraf

The sixtieth anniversary season of the Australian Ballet called for the crème de la crème of classical ballet: “Swan Lake”. Of the several versions kept in the company’s archive, artistic director David Hallberg decided to reinvent Anne Woolliams’s 1977 rendition. Hallberg, for whom this project marked his debut as a director, commissioned a fresh look, but kept 95% of Woolliams’s choreography. The remaining parts were contributed not by himself (“I’m definitely not a choreographer”, he stated during last Friday’s livestream), but by the Australian choreographer Lucas Jervies.

Woolliams’s “Swan Lake” opens with a prologue, in which the malicious von Rothbart casts a spell over captivated maidens, transforming them into obedient swans. The following four acts are in line with the traditional libretto, but include some noteworthy details. At his birthday party, the prince doesn’t meet his potential fiancées face-to-face, but is confronted with a political choice between the crowns presented by ambassadors from Spain, Hungary, and Italy. The related princesses only attend the ball in Act III, where they lead their country’s delegation of folk dancers. (more…)

Twice as Tragic

October 2, 2023 0 Comments

“Swan Lake”
Ballet Company of Teatro alla Scala
Teatro alla Scala
Milan, Italy
September 27, 2023 (livestream)

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2023 by Ilona Landgraf

Last Wednesday’s livestream of “Swan Lake” was the third such event since Manuel Legris took over the artistic reins of the Teatro alla Scala’s ballet company in December 2020. What a pity that I missed the previous livestreams – “Le Corsaire” and “Romeo and Juliet”!

La Scala dances a version of Rudolf Nureyev’s “Swan Lake” that, if I’m not mistaken, is the one he created for the Paris Opera Ballet in 1984. As all of his ballets, this one has jam-packed choreography. Last time it was shown in Milan in 2014 under the directorship of Makhar Vaziev. After Vaziev left to the Bolshoi Ballet in 2015, La Scala’s company entered unsteady waters. Legris’s guidance seems to be returning the company to its previous standards. Olga Smirnova and Jacopo Tissi (former colleagues at the Bolshoi and meanwhile at Dutch National Ballet) guested in the leading roles twice. The livestream was given to in-house soloists – Maria Celeste Losa (Odette / Odile) and Navrin Turnbull (Prince Siegfried). (more…)

Other than Bright

September 22, 2023 2 Comments

“Four Temperaments” (“The Four Temperaments” / “The Chairman Dances” / “Frank Bridge Variations” / Full Frontal” / extra: “After the Rain”)

Dutch National Ballet
Dutch National Opera & Ballet
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
September 17, 2023 (matinee)

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2023 by Ilona Landgraf

It’s unclear whether the Dutch National Ballet’s new mixed bill “Four Temperaments” took its title from one of the pieces – George Balanchine’s “The Four Temperaments” – or alludes to the different personalities of all choreographers involved. Next to Balanchine are the company’s artistic director Ted Brandsen, doyen Hans van Manen, and the Spaniard Juanjo Arqués, a regular contributor to the repertory. Let’s disclose later, why Christopher Wheeldon’s “After the Rain” was added as an extra to the matinee.

Balanchine’s “The Four Temperaments” relates to the Hippocratic medical concept of humourism that four bodily fluids (blood, yellow bile, black bile, and mucus) affect human personality traits and behaviors. Depending on which fluid dominates, an individual is melancholic, sanguine, phlegmatic, or choleric. For what would become his first piece for Ballet Society (the predecessor of New York City Ballet) in 1946, Balanchine commissioned a half-hour score by Paul Hindemith. (more…)

More, Please!

August 9, 2023

“Suite en blanc” / “Windgames”
Ballet Estable del Teatro Colón
Teatro Colón
Buenos Aires, Argentina
August 06, 2023 (livestream)

Recently, the Teatro Colón has expanded its online program which gives me hope to watch the company more often. This Sunday, the premiere of a new double bill was streamed live. It comprised Serge Lifar’s “Suite en blanc” (1943) and Patrick de Bana’s “Windgames” (2013). (more…)

Respectable

July 26, 2023

“Ballet Matinee”
John Cranko School
Stuttgart State Opera
Stuttgart, Germany
July 23, 2023

Stuttgart’s John Cranko School presented its work to the public in two matinees this July, both hosted by the Stuttgart State Opera. I chose to see the second one, which – as part of the annual Ballet in the Park program – was also streamed live to an outdoor audience in the Schlossgarten Park right in front of the opera house. Only upon arrival I learned that nearly half of the program was identical to what the school had presented in nearby Ludwigsburg this March.

As in Ludwigsburg, the students first showed an excerpt of the second act of “The Nutcracker” (Petipa, Ivanov, and Vainonen’s choreography). This time Alice McArthur danced the Sugar Plum Fairy, and in the role of her cavalier was again Joshua Nunamaker. Both are among this year’s graduates and exemplify what I observed throughout the matinee: Cranko School students deliver precise positions, clean lines, strong jumps, clear accentuation, solid balances, and – above all – they are fearless. Not a single student failed to rise to the occasion (I admired, above all, Keisuke Miyazaki in his “Swan Lake” variation and Alexei Orohovsky in a variation from “Paquita”). (more…)

Fissures

July 10, 2023

“Jewels”
The Australian Ballet
Arts Centre Melbourne / State Theatre
Melbourne, Australia
July 06, 2023 (livestream)

David Hallberg, artistic director of the Australian Ballet, has a knack for presenting his company in a complimentary light. Of the many troupes which streamed their performances live during the pandemic, only the Australians have maintained and enhanced this practice. The most recent livestream proved their ability to produce a compelling digital program. Livinia Nixon, who gave her debut as presenter alongside the ever-smiling Hallberg, kept me glued to the screen during the intervals, offering a steady flow of interesting interviews and behind-the-scenes clips. Each of them revealed the warmth and camaraderie within the company that has so often been mentioned in previous livestreams.

Celebrating their sixtieth anniversary this season, the company presented a sparkling new acquisition – Balanchine’s “Jewels” (1967) complete with Barbara Karinska’s sumptuous original costumes. One year of painstaking handicraft was spent on the latter’s recreation, requiring many volunteering hands and two months to sew and glue more than 29.500 beads, crystals, and pearls to dresses, tops, and tiaras. (more…)

Jam-Packed

July 3, 2023

“Hungarian National Ballet Institute Exam 2023”
Hungarian National Ballet Institute
Eiffel Art Studios
Budapest, Hungary
June 24, 2023 (matinee)

Everyone seemed in a flurry ahead of the Hungarian National Ballet Institute’s end-of-the-year exam. Groups of last-minute guests queued at the ticket stall, impatient for picking up their tickets. Staff members scanned the computer for bookings which miraculously had disappeared (mine included); one mother nervously waved for someone to deliver a packet of dance tights to her daughter backstage. The show started ten minutes late and – due to a packed program – lasted twenty minutes longer.

No less than thirty-eight pieces were presented in the two-part gala by – if correctly counted at curtain call – sixty-seven students in total. That only nine of them were male, substantiates Balanchine’s famous statement that “Ballet is woman”. (more…)

What to Choose for a Party

June 28, 2023

“Ildikó Pongor 70 Ballet Gala”
Hungarian National Ballet
Hungarian State Opera
Budapest, Hungary
June 24, 2023

One month after the Iván Nagy Ballet Gala, the Hungarian State Opera hosted another festive ballet evening – a birthday gala in honor of Ildikó Pongor, veteran artist of the company, who turned seventy earlier this June. Pongor spent almost her entire professional life at the Hungarian National Ballet, first as a dancer, then as artistic director, ballet master, and co-choreographer. She also worked internationally in Vienna and Stockholm, among others.
The brief compilation of archival videos and photos that opened the gala made it clear within seconds: Pongor has an effervescent energy whose positivity is infectious, even on celluloid. Regrettably, I don’t speak Hungarian and was unable to follow the round of talks. Her colleagues, Mária Aradi, Katalin Csarnóy, and Imre Dózsa, shared memories about Pongor’s career; the humor that sparkled in Pongor’s eyes while listening indicated that she was pleased. (more…)